Update on the Harbor Freight Generator.

I managed to not only kill it today but catch the receptacle box on fire and that fused the on/off switch in the on position. Turned the gas line off and finally opened the choke all the way up to kill the engine. LOL kind of hairy there for a minute standing over a full gas tank, getting the fire put out and the engine to shut down Not going to knock the generator as it clearly says on the front to NOT EXCEED 58AMPS and after it was all said and done, I figured up the load was 72AMPs (My food trailer alone pulls 40 amps and ran fine on the generator) It was after I told my helper to plug in the 8 food warmers, 2 dorm refrigerators, a big fan and a few other things into the lot grid power......... and he plugged into extension cords in to the generator and then put 3 ways on the extension cords and then more extension cords into the 3 ways....... Not looking for a new helper yet but we did have a long discussion about following my instructions to the letter!

Here is where I do have the problem with the generator, not a single one of the 120V breakers blew.

I will still say it is a decent generator for emergency use, but not for sitting on the back of your truck to power anything that might overload the system. I would have been beyond pissed off had the gas tank gone and fried my Truck Would have been even more pissed if it had gone while I was trying to bust the receptacle box open with a hammer to get the fire extinguisher in it to kill the burning plastic and wire fire and get the damn engine to stop running............. With the price of gas that would have been 7 gallons of wasted fuel ! !

 

THAT IS A PURE PIECE OF CRAP ,
RETURN & GET A FULL REFUND AFTER LETTING FIREMEN OR UL/NEC KNOW.
Many a death will come from this .
Im shaking my head at this line """I will still say it is a decent generator"""
This is NOT ALLOWED !!

Idiots will abuse , so breakers are installed

GOT IT !
Sloth

Or we let darwins effect clean out the stupid

 

Breakers may not trip until they hit 200% of rated load.
You have to check the trip curve. They may not even be close to tripping at 125% of load.
Those cheap little panel breakers are just about the worse, more like an on off switch than an actual breaker.
I rewired my generac and tossed the panel breakers and replaced them with square d QO breakers so this wouldn't happen.
Mine is rated for 72 or 73 amps, but I installed a 50 amp square d breaker on the lines coming off the generator to hopefully keep it from melting down. My generator has a 16 gallon gas tank so any fire could be both exceptionally catastrophic and spectacular. That's also why it's on a trailer and not in the back of a truck, because generators occasionally do catch on fire.
I keep a 70 amp breaker in its attached tool box incase I need to run the welder, I can switch that breaker out in about 1 minute.

Generators like that are usually only rated to run at half load continuously.
I recently found I was able to run my dryer and electric car charger drawing 37 amps on a 30 amp breaker with out tripping it. The breaker did buzz but no trip, as the dryer heating element cycled on and off.
So I may down size that 50 amp breaker on my generac to a 40.

 

I can see I did a poor job conveying my sarcasm

 

I'm sure the manual says in fine print some where not to exceed more than 30 or 40 amps for more than a few minutes.

 

Did the same on my Generac but put a line with a 30amp and two 15 amps on it. LOL even use Sq Ds myself

 

Can run 40 amps continually with no problem anything over that and it starts bogging down bad. When the kid plugged in the melt down was almost instant. Just glad he had the good sense to come get me before it got out of hand. And he now knows why we plug so much into the lots grid power and not the generator

 

What was it running?

 

Hey the whole thing is funny now............ I was not so amused wondering if I was going to go up like a bottle rocket LOL Was not going to let the Big Red Thunder Chicken burn though

 

Normally it runs a single freezer, a Refrigerator, a on demand water pump, a 10 gallon rv water heater and a Air conditioner. Today it was trying to run that + 6 food warmers (Big power suckers), 2 more refrigerators, two big fans, and a second freezer. I tallied it all up and came up with 72 amps total. The lot box is a 200amp service with 10 outlet boxes on 20amp breakers for each box, so I just plug everything but the base trailer power into that power.

 

Sorry for being so forthright , BUT I care about folks .
Power =

 

Going to open it up tmrw and figure out what exactly malfunctioned but I suspect when he plugged everything in at once it fused the breakers. As you said even of better generators those factory panels are the worst of the worst.

 

I keep it simple and try to stay well below the rated amps and run the right size cords for what is being pulled for what distance.

 

Some people seem live and breathe for Harbor Freight, especially some YouTubers. In my opinion, companies like Harbor Freight should be permanently closed. The vast majority of products they sell, are J U N K.

With that said, I am glad everything turned out right - meaning, I am happy to hear no one was hurt and little to no property damage was done.

 

Beware of even reputable manufactures breakers. I've found that breakers that are continuously pushed past the rated current value slowly loose their sensitivity. The morons that wired this house did things like mix inside an outside receptacles on the same circuit, (w/o GFI btw), and garage circuits with piggy-backed GFI, that also ran SIX 125W indoor floods.
So one 15A circuit, (labeled "lights), continuously ran a freezer, 'fridge, the big light load at times, AND anything I needed in the workspace. eg: compressor, drill, lathe, mill, table saw, etc. The entire mess was joined in an interior 4 gang switch box using those D*** crimp connections. Which went up in smoke one day. Which the breaker "should" have prevented.
After repairs were completed I swapped the breaker and tested the old one by successively adding portable resistant heaters to the circuit. Glad the test rig was an old panel box supplied with a 2x50 amp welder cable. That beaker didn't pop until over 3X rated current, and the panel connectors were starting to smoke.
Moral of my babbling? Make d*** sure you know how things are wired, and fix the screwups.

 

I've seen Hondas, Onans, Mitsubishis, Lincolns, and others smoke themselves. I've also seen those "junk" gensets give good and long service. It mostly boils down to reading and understanding the damn manual and using some common sense. If we banned everything one considers "cheap junk" to protect the stupid then what about those that can't afford any better and yet are capable of safely using lower end products.Sounds a bit like saying because there is stupid in the world so "no soup for you" because we know best. By the way, I'm retired on fixed income so my tool box has everything from Snap-on and Owatonna and comparable to Harbor Freight. My gensets run from Briggs and "junk" brand thru Daihatsu self contained liquid cooled. Lets not penalize those of less means because stupid exist.

 

Another problem is those cheap panel breakers are thermal only.
Real breakers are thermal and magnetic activated.
That's why the 30 amp breaker running 37 amps buzzes, because the magnet side is about to trip.
Thermal/magnetic breakers have a much better trip curve than thermal only. Actually thermal don't really have a trip curve, it looks more like a slightly bent trip line.